A public instrument
The Kardashev Scale
A logarithmic measure of civilisations by the energy they can command. Humanity is early. The fire is lit. The ladder is long.
This century 0.73 K ≈ humanity
About 20 terawatts of primary energy · 2 × 1013 W
How to read the ladderInner ring = Type I. The gold arc is us. The outer rings are still empty.
How to read this
A logarithm of fire
In 1964 the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev asked how loud a civilisation would have to be before a radio telescope could hear it. He ranked three answers: a planet, a star, a galaxy.
Carl Sagan later stretched the ranks into a continuous index — a logarithm of power, in watts:
K = (log10 P − 6) / 10
Type I sits at 1016 W, Type II at 1026 W, Type III at 1036 W. Each whole step is ten billion times the energy of the last.
Why it looks slow
The kindness of logarithms
K ≈ 0.73 sounds like we are nearly Type I. We are not. The index is logarithmic. The remaining work is not.
- × 500 humanity → Type I
- × 1010 Type I → Type II
- × 1010 Type II → Type III
The ladder
From a megawatt to a galaxy
Scroll the Sagan index from K = 0 to Type III. Equal height is equal logarithm — not equal power. Large plates are the rungs. Small labelled pips are programmes of this decade — they sit at the rung they serve, not at the watts of the project. Hover or tap for the note.
The fire is lit
The planet is not yet a machine.
The star is not yet a garden.
The galaxy has not noticed us.
That is not a failure. It is a beginning.